Help:Duplicate communities

Here at Fandom, we want to bring all fans together and help them build the best resources there are for the topics they’re passionate about. A topic can be a TV or anime series, a movie or entire movie franchise, a game or series of games, a brand of toys, a book series, a fictional universe, or anything else of which you are a fan. When fans are united, they form the strongest communities. In collaborating and combining their strengths, they create the best wikis.

Where multiple wikis on the same topic exist, however, fans split their efforts and compete with each other for readers, editors and authority. The duplicate content they create is penalized by search engines such as Google, especially when a new wiki copies pages of an existing wiki. As a result, both wikis will appear lower in search results, receive fewer visitors and attract fewer new community members.

When creating a new wiki on Fandom, please make sure that there isn’t already an existing community on that same topic.

For example, if you love Harry Potter and want to share in-depth information on the wizarding world with other fans, please join the existing Harry Potter community and help out there, rather than starting your own wiki from scratch. If you come across a wiki on one of your interests that has been abandoned, you can adopt it.

Contents

When may two wikis cover the same topic?

Whenever a newly created wiki is recognized as a potential duplicate by Fandom’s automatic matching tool, the founder will be asked why they think this wiki should exist.

We may have a false positive, and your wiki is not a duplicate at all - then you can go ahead and start building its content. And in some specific cases, a wiki may not count as a duplicate, even if the topic is already covered in some form elsewhere:

This is a Fanon wiki

You’re really into drawing, writing fanfiction or role-playing in your favorite fictional universe, or you want to cover other derivative works created by fans and not official sources? Fanon wikis cover the same topic as Canon wikis, but they focus on creativity rather than factual documentation. Since it can be difficult to tell fanfiction or fanart from canonical information, it often makes sense to dedicate separate wikis to them. They don’t compete for the same audience, but rather complement each other.

If you state that your intended new wiki is a Fanon wiki, then please provide a written explanation of how your wiki is different from the existing wiki(s).

This wiki is for a separate installment the existing wiki isn’t covering

Are you planning to write about a sequel, prequel, remake or other type of distinct installment of an existing franchise? Generally, it’s best to keep information about all different installments from one franchise on the same wiki, since the same people are likely interested in this installment as the rest of the franchise.

However, if the community cannot or will not cover this installment on the existing wiki, you may start a separate wiki for it. If you are not sure an existing wiki is planning to cover a specific installment, you can always reach out to the wiki’s admins and ask.

If this is the case, please provide a link to your messages with the administrators of the existing wiki.

This is for an adaptation on a different medium

Are you planning to cover a video game based on a book series, where a wiki on the books already exists? Or a live-action movie that is based on a manga?

Sometimes, the same subject can be treated very differently in different media and be aimed at a different target audience. For instance, a video game based on a popular book may have more in common with other video games than with its source material. In such cases, having a separate wiki to document it can be preferable to squeezing the information onto a wiki where it clashes horribly with the existing content structure and tone.

For example, Fandom’s Star Wars Wiki covers a wealth of movies, novels and series, while the video game Star Wars:The Old Republic is covered in detail on a standalone wiki. This wiki serves as a guide for gamers and covers technical details in a way that Wookieepedia doesn't.

What are bad reasons for starting a new wiki on an existing topic?

In the past, anyone could create a wiki on Fandom on any topic with hardly any restrictions. As a result, users have sometimes created wikis - including duplicates - for reasons that Fandom no longer considers acceptable. These are the most common ones and why these no longer apply:

I don’t like the people on the existing community

Did you have a falling out with an admin or another user? Do you have ideas on how the wiki should look or how it should be organized that were rejected by the community? Is the admin team on the existing team doing a frustratingly terrible job administering the wiki? Or do you perhaps just feel it would be really fun to return to a blank slate and be the one who makes all the rules?

While we absolutely understand that some users and admins can be hard to work with, and how frustrating it is when you have ideas and can’t carry them out without prior consent by others, we don’t think conflicts of this kind are reason enough to jump ship and create a duplicate wiki. It does not solve the original problem, can split a previously united fan community and may only serve to isolate you.

If you feel like a wiki’s admins or other users are really disruptive and their behavior harms the community, and you’re not able to resolve this on your own, please reach out to the assigned Wiki Manager or, where there isn’t one, to Fandom staff.

You can also consult these resources:

How to resolve conflict (Note: This is an older blog post, some information may be outdated, but the core advice remains valid)

The existing wiki is bad

Starting over is sometimes easier than building on imperfect beginnings made by others. If it turns out that an established wiki’s content structure or policies don’t work, or that the content quality is lacking, it may be time-consuming and tedious to make improvements. But when you create a separate wiki to start over, you compete with the existing wiki for pageviews, Google rankings and ultimately fellow editors, resulting in two separate sites that are each lesser versions of what they could be.

We encourage you to work with the admins and other active editors on the existing wiki and come up with a plan for how you can turn the wiki around together. If there is no active admin on a wiki where you see lots of room for improvement, you can adopt it.

You want to create your own site and not work with others

The fundamental principle on which wikis operate is collaboration. When multiple people work together, each one contributing their knowledge and particular strengths, they achieve the best results. If what you have in mind is not a collaborative in nature, and you don’t want anyone else to interfere with what you are doing, perhaps a platform other than Fandom is better suited to your needs.

You need a separate wiki to test complex scripts or templates

If you are a new editor who would like to practice editing and get more familiar with wikitext somewhere far from the scrutinizing eyes of others, you don’t need to start a whole new wiki. You can create subpages for your user profile instead, for example under https://community.fandom.com/wiki/User:Your_Username/Sandbox_page.

However, if you need to test more complex tasks involving multiple pages, templates and even namespaces, and you don’t want to risk disrupting an existing wiki with your tinkering, you can make use of a sandbox or playground wiki. This should not be a copy of an existing wiki, since this may confuse both search engines and users as to which one is the actual, reliable resource.

Duplicate wiki review

If your wiki is flagged as a duplicate during the creation process, and you're sure you want to create it anyway, please let us know if it fits any of these cases by choosing one of the given options. We’ll review your request within 5 business days. Note that if Fandom staff don’t agree that your wiki deserves an exemption, the wiki will be deleted without further notice. If you want to object to a deletion or you just aren’t sure whether a topic you have in mind warrants a new wiki, you can always ask Fandom directly.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to other communities covering the same or a related topic and establishing an affiliate relationship with them! You can boost each other’s discoverability on Google and on the web by linking to each other and help each other with advice.

You may later decide that your topic and the way you’re covering it overlaps with another existing wiki after all, and that you want to join forces. That’s not a problem - content can be moved over, and wikis can be merged into one at any point.

Someone copied my community!

The following advice applies if you found that someone else created a wiki on the same topic as yours and directly copied your content, designs or artwork.

If they have done so without attributing the copied content under the terms of the Creative Commons copyright license, i.e. not linked to the page on your wiki from which they took the content, they are in violation of Fandom's copyright rules. In that case, please message the wiki's founder or the user who copied your content directly, pointing them to Fandom's licensing page, and ask them to remove the copied content, or at least to add proper attribution. If they refuse, please inform Fandom staff.

Merging Communities

If you want to merge your community with another existing wiki, please start by discussing it with members of both communities. If an agreement has been reached on both sites, see Help:Merging communities on how to merge them.